


Philia Waiting

by AslansCompass



Series: Eros in Absentia [4]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Asexuality, Gen, friendships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:35:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AslansCompass/pseuds/AslansCompass
Summary: Mandy Palmer, reluctant daughter of Aphrodite, feels like the whole world's against her. But sometimes, there's kindness that she doesn't see. Side character perspectives on my "Eros in Absentia" series.
Series: Eros in Absentia [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913581
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	1. Julie Feingold

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter goes at a different point in the story, which will be indicated in the starting note.

post chapter one of "i missed me more"

* * *

  
The moment the bright light flashed, I closed my eyes. Not again. Surely everyone had been claimed by now. Some of the Olympians are even claiming kids before bringing them to camp. And it was so close! I thought Hermes cabin was finally done with this crap!

  
I squinted at the scene. Yeah, it was definitely someone at the table. But who--I glanced around, marking them off in my mind; Chris, Cecil, Alicia....Mandy. Where was Mandy? 

  
Oh. _That_ was Mandy. I never would have recognized her otherwise. Her camp t-shirt and jeans had been replaced by a black tank top and floor-length scarlet skirt. Her face looked like a makeup ad, emphasizing the lack of glasses. But her body language gave her away; she glanced around like a frightened rabbit. 

  
"Mandy, are you--" but my question was drowned out by catcalls and whistles. She ran out of the pavilion, disappearing into the woods.

  
A few people--mostly guys--stared after her, but the rest of us turned back to our meals. 

  
"Well, I never would have expected that," Alicia said. "I mean, I always had her pegged as Athena's, if anything. Not that she's one to abandon her children, but personality-wise,"

  
"I would have put a few drachmas on minor deity, myself."

  
Honestly, I'd forgotten she wasn't my half-sister. She'd been here longer than I had, despite being a few years younger.

  
"Shouldn't we pack up her things," Chris asked. "She'll be moving to cabin ten now."

  
"I'll do it." I said.

  
"Dibs on any candy."

  
"Not this time, guys. I'll get you desert later," I say quickly, cutting off complaints. "Besides, it's not like any of her clothes would fit you anyway."

  
Back in the cabin, I start rounding up Mandy's belongs from around the room. A hairbrush on the window sill, a notebook on the floor, pajamas under the pillow. I shoved the rest of it into her trunk, but it was still light enough to pick up. I grabbed it and headed over to the Aphrodite cabin.

  
Their head counselor, Drew Taneka, was waiting by the door. "I'll take that," she sneered. "We don't want any thieves in here."

  
I rolled my eyes. "Please, like you have anything I'd want to steal. I'm just dropping off Mandy's stuff."

  
"Mandy. So that's her name?" Drew frowned. "I'll have to make sure she didn't pick up any bad habits. And give some lessons on basic hygiene. Before today, I never would have taken her for my sister!"

  
"That's kinda how it goes. Otherwise Hermes' cabin wouldn't have been twice the size of everyone else." 

  
Drew handed the trunk off to one of her brothers. He came back in a few minutes, trunk still in hand. 

  
"Here," he told me. "You can have this back. We've got way better stuff."

  
I'd heard. One of these days I was gonna break in and wipe those smug looks off their faces.

  
Was Mandy going to join them? Would she have that mocking grin and perfect hair and dress like a fashion plate? Somehow, I couldn't picture it. She was Mandy, clumsy , but quiet and determined. 

  
They were going to eat her alive.


	2. Hestia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just before chapter one of "i don't have enough faith to be an atheist"

Do not sing for me, o Muses, daughters of Apollo. 

Do not weave my thread, o Kindly Ones, deciders of men's fates.

Do not speak to me of quests, heroes of the mortal realm.

For I am Hestia, goddess of the hearth. I claim no throne nor consort, yet every hearth is my altar, and every flame my child.

Great deeds and fame are not my domain; neither am I honored in epic poems. 

But every wanderer longs for home; the darkest night is brightened by a single star. 

Prometheus gave the mortals fire, but I give them homes. 

Perhaps that's one reason I rarely visit Camp Half-Blood. The rest of the pantheon tends to avoid the campers because of guilt, reluctant to answer requests.

I don't go because it's not a home. Even the old-timers, the year-rounders, see it as a refugee camp, a scrap of safety in a dangerous world. Not somewhere to belong. Maybe that will change now that Zeus granted Percy's boon.

Maybe not.

I do not choose sides. I watch, and wait,

and worry. 

Hermes may be the god of travelers, but I am the lamp that lights the path home.

Athena loved Odysseus, and her love saved him from many disasters. But I could feel his longing, the endless heartache of an exile. Even when Ithaca was leagues away, he would scan the horizon, hoping for a hint of home.

But his journey was tangible and traceable, a meandering line on a parchment map. Some need only a compass or astrolabe to find their way home; some need much more. 

Birds fly, fish swim. But what of those caught in-between, the emotional fosterlings of a strange species? Humans speak of the ugly duckling, but even that cygnet was raised by distant relations. 

So many seek a fire they cannot name. 


	3. Grace Ridley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post chapter two of "i don't have enough faith to be an atheist/dytheism"

Mandy had fallen asleep on the couch. She was too big to move now--she'd grown so much since she disappeared--so Grace took a blanket and draped it over her granddaughter.

  
Then she sat down to think. 

  
Four years.

  
Four years since Will's death and Mandy's disappearance. 

  
Six years since Johanna had vanished.

  
Johanna's disappearance had been hard enough to handle. Despite her determination, the police had downplayed the case. People disappeared all the time, they told her. There was no evidence of foul play, and no medical reason for urgency. It happened.

  
But she wouldn't just leave her family.

  
Okay, we'll do an interview. But the interview had ended on learning that Mandy was Will's child, not Johanna's. As if genetics made a difference! In the end, there was nothing more they would do for her. 

  
And when Mandy was attacked--no, not attacked. At least, not in the way she'd thought. Grace had never believed the bear story, but she'd thought it was a cover-up for sex trafficking. 

  
_Greek gods_ had been at the bottom of her list. Not even the bottom, more like several feet underground. "Biological mother," on the other hand, had been in the top five. Just not like this.

  
It sounded absurd.

  
Yet Grace hadn't lied when she told Mandy she believed her. She'd had a few philosophy classes back in the day. The discipline wasn't all Decartes and Plato; she'd earned three credits of logic. Just because something sounded ridiculous didn't mean it wasn't true. Consider the playtipus: an egg-laying, duck-nosed, swimming mammal? 

  
Mandy had never been a good liar. And she knew the story would be hard to swallow. Most madmen didn't realize how crazy their stories sounded. 

  
Grace sighed. Funny how life turned out sometimes. Her greatest fear the past four years had been Mandy's death. Her second greatest had been sexual abuse.

  
Turns out, she should have been afraid of ancient gods and monsters. The Manhattan 'blackout' had been on the news, but Grace hadn't paid much attention at the time. Now that she'd heard Mandy's story--what kind of idiots sent **teenagers** to war?

  
And Aphrodite--oh, if Grace ever got the chance to give that bitch a taste of her mind! Goddess or not, nobody should talk to kids that way! Sure, the woman was an entitled snob in most of the legends, but most people would learn something in thousands of years! 


	4. Jen Schultz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before chapter four of "i don't have enough faith to be an atheist"

_journal excerpts:_

Homecoming prep again. Honestly, why do they even bother making us come if we're not gonna learn anything? Still not sure if it's better or worse than PE. On the plus side, met someone new today. And like, new-new, even newer than I am. Possibly weirder than me too, not sure yet. But at least similarly weird. Ms. Anderson brought someone in while we were decorating the hallway. Well, Jess and Katie and Brad were decorating. I was holding up one corner of the banner while they decided how high they wanted it. Just cause I'm taller than most of the boys....

Anyway, new girl introduced herself to me and spent the rest of the period handing me pieces of tape for posters. Mandy just moved into the area this month, which is why she was late starting school. She doesn't like gym or homecoming either, so bonus! We're in the same English and history classes, so maybe I can actually choose a partner if we have group assignments. 

* * *

Saw Mandy leaving the parking lot with Ms. Ridley. I knew she looked familiar! Her face was all over town a few years ago; she'd gone missing or something. And her mother disappeared before that, I think. 

I know I'm not supposed to pry, but, man, what happened?

* * *

Everybody's got their own theories about Mandy. Katie suggested a custody battle. Sara believes Mandy just ran away. Brad thinks that Mandy's the lovechild of some celebrity, sent here incognito.

Brad's an idiot. Most celebrities don't even know any states besides California, New York, Florida, and maybe Illinois--and the latter only consists of Chicago.

But I've been doing some thinking. No one ever found Mandy's mom--dead or alive. The police stopped looking after a few months. They barely did anything when Mandy disappeared either. And why would they do that?

Smells like a cover-up to me. If Mandy's mom is dead, maybe someone killed her. And then that person came after Mandy. Or maybe her mom's still alive, but hiding somewhere. I watched a TV show once where a whole family had to go into hiding because someone witnessed a crime. Witness protection program, they called it. That would explain how she disappeared for so long. And why Ms. Ridley hasn't made a big deal about it. It might be safe for Mandy to come back, but not her mom.

Or her mom is really dead, and Mandy is safer here. 

We don't have crime around here. I mean, sure, there's the underage drinking and speeding, but most weeks the police blotter is just car-deer crashes and confused senior citizens. And everybody knows everybody; strangers stand out.

All the same, I'll keep an eye on her. Even if I'm wrong, high school sucks bad enough as a newbie. We don't have 'cliques' like CW shows, but that doesn't mean it's easy to join a group of friends who've known each other since third grade. Some of the guys have been bothering her too--I overheard Dave ask her to the dance in the same mocking, ridiculous tone he used with me. And when she said no thanks, he was all "oh, am I not good enough for you? you think i'm just some hick? You have no idea what you're missing."

Then some girls were asking her about it later and it eventually got around to what kind of guys she liked and she was all 'meh.' 

Ditto here! I just don't get it! We're all way too young to get married anyway, and I don't know ANY of these guys! Why would I want to go out with someone I might not even like? 

Definitely my kind of weird!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Jen is a unknown ace herself. Pretty much a self-insert of my thoughts in high school.


End file.
